Please, please, just win the league...

Good evening from a sunny (but still too chilly for my liking) London. 

Spring is well and truly underway now and everything is starting to get brighter, unless you are an Arsenal fan or in any way closely associated with Arsenal Football Club. 

Two losses in a row, the first time that's happened this season, and what a time for it to happen. After falling at the final hurdle in the Carabao Cup final to Manchester City, Arsenal managed to not respond at all in bitterly disappointing fashion by losing away to Championship play-off hopefuls Southampton. We now find ourselves going from tongue in cheek quadruple chatter to praying we don't throw everything away. To be clear, almost no Arsenal fans seriously believed we would win the quadruple, but the chatter around it from rivals was a nice reflection of how well we were competing on all fronts this season. 

I completely agree and understand that the two domestic cups were our lowest priorities this season, but they certainly were not throw-aways to me, I cared about winning them. We haven't won a trophy in six years so we are in no position to think we are above any silverware at the moment. 

I wanted to win those competitions and I think we had the luck of the draws, and supposedly the squad, to be able to win at least one of them. However, unlike my little cousin's colouring book, we did not manage to get over the line. 

I take nothing away from Southampton who are the form team in England at the moment and played really well. They looked threatening on the break almost every time and could have scored a couple more if their decision making in the final third was a bit better. 

But I'm an Arsenal fan and my focus is very much on what we aren't doing well at the moment. The manager's tactics seem to have been found out a bit and teams are finding a way to nullify us. It seems virtually none of our attackers, bar little Maxi Dowman who is a literal child, are functioning anywhere near their best. Our superstar defence that has made up for our lacklustre attacking play this season seems shakier than ever, which I think is hugely attributed to personnel and fitness issues by the way. 

Southampton knew if they just bypassed our midfield then there was something on for them. Nørgaard, who I think has looked very solid in the 3 seconds he's been given on the pitch this season, appeared a shadow of his former self - I might mean that literally as everything seemed to pass through him as if he had no physical form. 

It's tough to pinpoint a single reason behind our recent struggles at the moment. I think it is a mixture of players being injured/knackered/out of form, as well as a desperate need to tweak the coaching and tactics in games. 

We've had some significant injury issues to manage this season and the work on the squad in the summer, plus some monumental efforts from the players who managed to stay fit this season, have allowed us to survive those issues and push on to the great position we currently find ourselves in the league etc. However, I still think the manager could have managed the squad better by trusting some players like Nørgaard and Lewis-Skelly more in certain games throughout this season. That would have allowed them to have more game time to build up better form, and would have allowed some key players (Rice/Zubi) to get some more much needed rest. 

It's not all down to this though, as I thought the players on the pitch against Southampton and City still should have been enough to win those games, if not perform a bit better in them as a minimum. There's also a fundamental coaching issue with this team, no matter who is on the pitch. Our attack hasn't functioned all season, even considering the personnel issues highlighted above. The free-flowing attacking football employed by Arteta teams of old (22/23 especially) seems a distant memory as if it was under a different manager. The ruthless efficiency of our attack in 23/24 has also evaporated before our eyes. Our style of play for the last couple of seasons has become so cautious and not cohesive in any way. The attackers seems like strangers playing together for the first time rather than displaying signs of building up solid relationships where they instinctively know where each other will be in any given passage of play. All our attacking hopes now seem to rest on a boy who just found out that Lenny dies in Of Mice and Men (if this spoils it for you then you are too young to be here and should be doing your homework). 

The group (which includes both coaching staff and players) need to find a solution - and quickly. We cannot do a full throwback to the Wenger days and get spanked in Lisbon to effectively fall out of all three cups in three consecutive games. Most crucially of all, we cannot let things slip in the league. If we don't win the Premier League from here, it will be a disaster and I fear the bottlers tag will be scarred permanently into this iteration of Arsenal's squad forevermore. So you know, I'm feeling pretty cheerful at the moment 😄. 

If we can respond strongly against Sporting, helped by the return of more key players (Rice, Trossard, etc.) then I think that could really get us back on track and calm a lot of nerves ahead of the crucial clash against Bournemouth at the weekend. It will almost let us fans compartmentalise the last couple of defeats, consigning them to the logic of "well clearly we're focussing on the important trophies of the league and Champions League". Oh how we love a hand-wave with a sprinkling of denial. 

Even if the worst should happen tomorrow night - just please Arsenal - win this bloody league! Just win the league and all the other suffering will be pushed aside. 

Bonus side note: I'm going to try posting more regularly (after each game) with shorter and more focussed pieces. Let's see if I can stick to it!